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There’s a very interesting poll out today from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, covering a broad range of topics in the news. What I found intriguing about the poll is that it showed surprisingly decent support for specific proposals for entitlement reform.

62% of respondents thought that means-testing Medicare and Social Security benefits was “totally acceptable” or “mostly acceptable,” compared to 37% opposed. 56% supported raising the Social Security retirement age to 69 by 2075, compared to 42% opposed. (Respondents also favored cutting funding to Obamacare, 51% to 46%.)

Most surprisingly of all, 44% supported gradually converting Medicare into a voucher system, with 50% opposed. Even though this means the anti-voucher position is still “winning,” I would have expected anti-vouchers to win two-to-one. Gradually migrating Medicare to a premium support model has the support not only of Republicans but many centrist Democrats, and it could provide a bipartisan solution to the Medicare crisis.

Notably, respondents were deeply opposed to “significantly cutting the funding” for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. They opposed significant Medicare cuts 76% to 23%; Medicaid 67% to 32%; and Social Security 77% to 22%.

This brings up two questions: (1) Can advocates of entitlement reform effectively promote the specific reform policies above (means-testing, raising the retirement age, vouchers) without them being attacked as “cuts”? (2) A big reason why Americans are opposed to entitlement cuts is because politicans have led them to believe that our fiscal problems can be solved with trivial cuts to domestic discretionary spending. Will politicians begin to educate Americans as to the real problem? It seems like they’re starting to, but the survey shows we still have a long way to go.